AN IMPORTANT BOOK
I have just finished reading Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is a short book, written in the form of a letter from Coates to his teen-age son. Coates is a worthy heir to the legacy of James Baldwin. It is a long time since a book has moved me so powerfully. I recommend it most strongly to all of you.
Are you aware of David Brooks myopic and elitist response to the book:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opinion/listening-to-ta-nehisi-coates-while-white.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1
I am, but I was feeling a trifle peckish this morning, and I was fearful that talking about Brooks would bring on a fit of projectile vomiting. One has to be careful of one's health at my age.
ReplyDeleteIt is a wonderful book, deeply affecting and beautifully written. It's an important book despite what the sometimes lately ridiculous Cornel West says about the book and Coates (“Baldwin was a great writer of profound courage who spoke truth to power. Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power.” "Coates can grow and mature, but without an analysis of capitalist wealth inequality, gender domination, homophobic degradation, Imperial occupation (all concrete forms of plunder) and collective fightback (not just personal struggle) Coates will remain a mere darling of White and Black Neo-liberals, paralyzed by their Obama worship and hence a distraction from the necessary courage and vision we need in our catastrophic times.") Ta-Nehisi Coates struggles in his way and recounts them in his forms, the form of this book, a caution to a young black body--his son's--more vulnerable than most in catastrophic times; nothing more personal than that.
ReplyDeleteLook, West has been a vain pretentious idiot for a very long time. Coates has been very good for a very long time (e.g., his long piece of reparations). Dyson (in somewhat of an overkill) has his number. About Brooks, well, he got some nice snark over in Twitterville. Here's one:
ReplyDelete"It appears tanehisicoates "realism" has taken all the fun out of David Brooks' perfectly happy life inside an American Greetings card."
and some more here:
http://observer.com/2015/07/david-brooks-writes-about-race-while-white-twitter-erupts/ and
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/17/open_season_on_david_brooks_twitter_erupts_at_clueless_new_york_times_columnists_masterful_trolling/
Of course, the NYTimes daily book review of Coates a few days earlier was almost as bad but more sophisticated.
oh and this:
http://www.alternet.org/media/david-brooks-relies-ignorant-white-privilege-attack-ta-nehisi-coates-new-book